Hospitality management specialist and business coach Caroline Cooper lists the seven mistakes hoteliers make in getting more business, explaining first the four most common mistakes hoteliers make when trying to gain new business, and second the three ways hoteliers let repeat business slip through their fingers.

 

 

 

Trying to market to everyone. The danger is if you try to appeal to everyone, you end up not appealing to anyone. Different hotels need to appeal to different people and the clearer you are in determining who your market is then the easier it’s going to be to get the type of guests you want. Consider the people who are booking your hotel but also the people who are going to influence those people, for example, local tourist offices and the media. The whole process of what you offer and how you market becomes so much easier when you’ve got a clear picture in your mind of who it is that you want to attract.

 

Getting into price wars. If you understand and recognize your target market, the pricing aspect is so much easier. The better you understand your market, the easier it is to avoid getting into a situation where you are possibly undercut by the competition. Why is this important? First, it makes you less profit, and second, it starts to undermine what you offer. To avoid getting into this situation, understand what adds value to your guests and highlight what really differentiates you. It’s easy to try and copy what the competition is doing, but actually you want to do is the opposite. You need to innovate.

 

Talking about the features you have but not saying anything about the benefits. This is about telling your guests what you offer, but not relating it to why that might be a benefit to them. If you know what is of value to your guests, make sure you spell it out to them. For example, if your target market is family and you know they value having somewhere safe for their children, spell out that you have a fenced swimming pool that keeps your children safe rather than simply stating you have a swimming pool.

 

Not measuring the impact of your marketing. Each time you do a campaign or promotion, how accurate a picture do you have of what additional business that has brought you and what the value of that business is? What are the types of things you need to be tracking? The easiest one to do is tracking your website and looking at analytics. Do you know what keywords work well and what drives traffic to your site? What are the marketing campaigns that have worked well for you?

 

Losing trust and credibility. Your guest makes the booking but how much contact do they have with you from between making the booking and arriving into their room. There are numerous points at which things can go wrong from not getting confirmation, not hearing from you, not being able to find you. All these things add to your credibility and go towards building trust. If those first impressions aren’t up to expectations, people start to look for faults. People are not going to come back if they get a bad first impression or first experience and they are not going to recommend you to their friends so this is key to getting repeat business. It’s about meeting that promise, delivering what you promised, and over delivering.

 

Not building relationships with your guests. Getting to know your guests provides such a fantastic opportunity. First, it’s a great way of finding out what’s important to them, and second it’s a fantastic way of getting feedback and it paves the way for repeat business and referrals. At what point do you start to build this relationship? How well do you communicate [before the guest arrives], how personal is the communication or is it just transactional email once the booking has been made? On arrival at hotel, how visible are you as the manager or owner? After they have gone, how much communication do you have ongoing?

 

Trying to do everything yourself. You can’t be everywhere at once and therefore do need to rely on your team. If you don’t trust your team, they will be demotivated and that will reflect on your guests. How does this impact on getting more business? First, it means if your guests aren’t getting a fantastic experience every time, they are less likely to come back and less likely to recommend you to their friends. Second, your team are not empowered. They need to understand where your business comes from so they are in a position to upsell.

 

 

 

This is a brief summary of points made by Caroline Cooper during a tele-seminar on the 7 fatal mistakes hoteliers make in getting more business held August 23. Click here to register for access to a replay of the seminar.

 

Caroline Cooper is a business coach with over 25 years experience in business and leadership development. She is the founder of Zeal Coaching and author of the Hotel Success Handbook.

 

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